Latest News
What’s Up with the Rain and the Grapes?
Each summer everyone asks, “What is the effect of this rain on the grapes?” Is it good for the grapes? Grapes grow fine in dry weather climates so the short answer is that the grapes don’t really need much rainfall. The longer answer is that more rainfall causes David and the vineyard workers to prune […]
Fire up the BBQ this Summer!
Let’s get fired up, it’s BBQ season! If you’re like us, you look forward to July’s annual BBQ Festival & Competition, Chillin’ and Grillin’ in the Glades! But when it comes to wine, which one should you bring to the cook-out? Here are our top picks… Pardee Red is a versatile blend featuring beautiful summer flavors of fresh […]
Twas’ the Week Before Harvest
What’s happening in the vineyard a week before harvest? A lot! We are doing 100 berry samples for all of our different varieties. We take a hundred berries from the vineyard for each variety and bring them to the lab to run an analysis of sugar levels, total acidity and pH. We are looking for […]
The Grapes… they are a Changin’!
August is a beautiful time of the year – the grapes begin to change color at MountainRose Vineyards! If you keep up with the annual status of the vineyard, you might remember bud break in April, shortly followed by flowering, and then fruit set in June. Next we go into the important stage called veraison, […]
Drones to Detect Disease in Vineyard
Is it Burgundy, France? Napa Valley? Australia? No! It’s in Wise, Virginia and at MountainRose Vineyards! The University of Virginia at Wise, with the support of key players like Jack Kennedy, applied for a grant to investigate the agricultural application of unmanned aerial system (Drones) to detect diseases like downy mildew and esca in vineyards. Imagine our surprise […]
Grape Stomping Anyone?
Pigeage pronounced “peej-AHJE,” is the French winemaking term for the traditional stomping of grapes in open fermentation tanks. Grapes are put through a crusher to remove stems and then placed in open fermentation bins. The fruit must be gently crushed to allow the juice to run free from the grape skins but must stay in contact to […]
Basic Rules for Wine Storage
We are often asked about storing wine and here are a few basic wine rules for ideal storage. The longer you keep your wines before opening the bottle, the more important it is to follow the rules for the best tasting product. Store wines in a dark area to avoid becoming “light struck” which causes […]
What Do Wine Competitions Really Tell You?
What is a wine competition? It is a “blind” tasting by wine experts of large numbers of wines to determine their relative quality on a certain date. What’s a “blind” tasting? A blind tasting simply means the judges have no idea what specific wines they are tasting. The varietal (or type of wine) and the vintage (year […]
Wine for your Thanksgiving Dinner
Celebrate a great Thanksgiving feast with wine. Whether you tend toward reds, whites, or blushes, there’s something at MountainRose Vineyards for everyone and everything — even dessert! By tradition, more wine is sold for Thanksgiving Day dinner than for any other meal of the year in spite of the fact that choosing a single wine for Thanksgiving […]
Are MountainRose Vineyards’ wines really different or special?
During a tour of the vineyards, someone asked this question. There are many reasons why our wines are special or different, but geographically speaking, why do our grapes turn out so wonderful? After a little searching, this quote from an article from the Washington Post explains it best. The article explained, “as the eastern U.S. […]